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I’m well liked in my family. This I understand. I think I’m easy to like. I don’t see how I have any other secret to being liked. I’m not especially anything. I’m not good socially. I never have been. Most of the time it’s easy to be part of a fairly large family who really do mean it when they ask how you are. But…

I’m the quiet one in a family of people who love to talk. To me it seems they just never run out of something to say, especially advice. It’s like noise pollution or white noise at times. I just stop listening and let them become part of the background. You know how it is when you put the radio or TV on and forget it’s there? It just becomes part of the atmosphere.

Now and then it drowns me out. So I give in and do as I’m told even when my own ideas, instincts or opinions were different and just as valid. That’s when I feel angry.

True, I feel guilty about it. We shouldn’t just ignore our Mothers, our sisters or our brothers. But, there are times when I just can’t take the constant feedback any more. I’m the oldest. Long before I was an adult they all expected me to be the one in charge, and I was. I managed everything. It’s odd to me that now they think I need all this advice.

Of course, I do understand it is all well meant. It’s no one’s fault but my own that I sometimes feel there is too much advice for a grown woman all of 47 (nearly 48) years. So, even when I do lose patience with all the communication, I do know it comes from the right place. I just endure.

Some of the feedback is good. I may never post this because they would be hurt (over over analyze everything) if they read this. I don’t want to hurt anyone. But, there are times I’d like to feel more like an adult than a child who has to be taken care of and told what to do.

In our culture it is very alienating to be 50. That age where it hits you that you may not even be middle aged now. Being young, from childhood to somewhere in the 30’s was such a different perspective. I didn’t see it then but I can see it now. Being in my 40’s was (so far) the best time of life for me. I felt ok and even good sometimes. I felt I was ok with myself.

Then, among the years I should have been 40-something, 50 hit me. It came down hard and clouded everything. Even when I could have been happy being 40-something that 50 hung over me, hovering like my personal rain cloud of doom.

In younger years I had read about actresses and such who said there were no roles for older women. I thought little of it. I could see older women in TV shows, movies, commercials, etc. Likely they were in theatre too if I cared to look.

But, the actresses said it wrong. It’s not that there aren’t roles for older women. It’s that there are so MANY roles for younger women, younger people.

Our culture is based on youth. Not just being young and looking it, but the parts of life which come in those younger years (traditionally): going to school, dating, marrying and having children. When I watch anything on TV now I am swarmed with the feeling of how much I don’t belong. How far I am past those parts of life. I don’t want to go back. I just want to be ok with where I am. But, it’s hard.

It’s hard to feel ok with being older when it seems we don’t exist, are expected to keep to ourselves and not be seen or heard. Unless it’s something to do with spending money like buying insurance, buying sedate vacations, buying pee pads (not for your period, whether you still get it or not).

I feel alienated in my own world. I don’t see where I fit in. I can talk to the younger generations. I don’t know their particulars any more: the music, the actors, etc. But, those are just entertainment. I know about life, having come through those younger years. But all my experience and knowledge is tainted by how younger people see me. I’m old. I don’t know the entertainment stuff so I’m relegated to being outdated, out of place and I don’t really understand how things are today.

Odd, but things aren’t all that different. People are born, go to school, try to get along in the world, get married, have babies (or not) and then…. it’s the long stretch of being there, but not getting in the way, until you’re finally as old as you feel.

I don’t feel old. I feel like me. I feel almost the same as I did when I was twenty. But, those are memories and I know that. No wonder we tend to look at the past more as we fall into the future where we don’t fit in and don’t have a place. In the past we had a place and the world was about us.

Now I’m an alien. Just because I’m 50.

If it weren’t for the perception of others (and my own awareness of time limits) I could believe I’m twenty. Young people expect being older to feel so different. It’s not. It’s almost exactly the same as feeling twenty. But, I look at those who are twenty and I can see a difference then. There is a shiny new-ness, an extra bounce and they’re just a bit quicker to laugh.

So maybe we do become an alien as we get older. Where is the mothership then? I’d like to find the other aliens and feel I belong again. I don’t like this feeling of being isolated among all the people I see every day.

The other thing I don’t like to think about is to look past myself and see those older than I am. Right now I may not feel I belong and I may feel like an alien… they look more alien. I worry about how I will still feel like myself when I start to look even less like myself and more alien to who I think I am.

I was watching a US TV show, Bones. The episode was about war heros, men in the war and the afterwards, the after care and how they are not understood or respected for what they went through.

My mind went to women who have been through an attack or stalking and other violence and victimization. We aren’t given much respect, understanding either.

Also, we go through it all alone. We are alone when attacked, no team has our backs, no group of soldiers. Mostly by our own choice because we don’t feel chatty about it all either. So many of the same emotions but so much difference in how people react and how women are misunderstood, blamed and treated afterwards.

Women don’t think to be proud of having survived being preyed on the way soldiers are told to be proud they served their country.

The question is – what do women serve , other than being a survivor, what is there for them to be proud of? Should we think we serve men by being abused? Is that what we can be proud of, like a soldier?

Ironic that the TV show I was watching ended up being about the death and cover up of a soldier killed by friendly fire. Is that how women should look at it? Attack or death by friendly fire? It doesn’t seem friendly to me.

Green Living History is something I invented when I wanted to pin myself down. I have a lot of interests and it does seem at some point they all relate to each other. Green Living History is that point. This started out as an ordered list but became a mess. Several of these are interests which fit into my other sites.

Do you remember The Polka Dot Door?

The Polka Dot Door was a children’s television show which began in the 1970′s in Ontario, Canada. TV Ontario broadcast the program 1971 to 1993.

Songs and stories and so much more at the Polka Dot Door!

Every show had a man and a woman as hosts and Polkaroo, a life sized polka dotted kangaroo, would appear for a few minutes on almost every show. They played in a play house which had a polka dot door, of course. Educational videos would be shown through one of the polka dots on the door.

The house also included a large indoor space where the hosts would have tea parties and birthdays and everything else. Outdoors I remember the playground with a sandbox and swing set.

I liked the toys: Marigold (a doll), Bear, (a stuffed teddy bear) and Humpty and Dumpty (two stuffed characters with round egg-like bodies) as if they were real but could only talk to the hosts. Often the host would pause, say “What was that Marigold?”, or “Bear says he…” and so on. Usually they would pick up the toy as they carried on a short conversation between the toy, themselves and the children watching the show.

Each show had a theme which would fit into the day of the week:

Monday was Treasure Day

Tuesday was Dress-Up Day

Wednesday was Animal Day

Thursday was Imagination Day

Friday was Finding-Out Day

Tanya Petrova, a Canadian soft sculpture artist, created Polkaroo.

Later Polka Dot Shorts began as a spin off from the original show. This show featured the toys as life sized soft sculptures having educational adventures.

Marigold was my favourite. I tried to find a sewing pattern to make the Marigold doll but did not find anything. I did find this photo which shows more of her design so I could make a pattern myself.

I was happy to become the “Oh Canada” Contributor on the Squidoo network site. I like writing about Canadian culture, history and so on. But, the more I write and post over there the more disappointed I am feeling. Almost none of my Canadian posts are keeping afloat enough (in traffic and reposts) for them to stop sinking to the bottom of the tank (tanking them, literally).

Within a month of being posted half of them are in the red. It is discouraging. I don’t like losing the time I put into them but more than that, I feel sad that not enough people care about any of it. I’ve written about Canadian things like movies and TV shows. Those are popular posts for the US TV and movies. But, not the Canadian content.

Anyway, I am going to begin moving them here. Someone (other than myself) may some day find them and be glad to have found out more about our Canadian content, people and so on and so forth.

The service rep was very nice, spoke well and so. However, an appointment was made to install the TV service for this morning. I waited home until noon when I phoned to see if the tech was running late. No one phoned me to let me know. I was told I had no appointment for the install. Yet I do have a confirmation # which the rep looked up and apologized for the problem. I was not especially surprised as this is at least the THIRD time Bell has done this to me. I was left on hold to be transferred to someone who would help me today. However, I waited on hold about 10 – 15 minutes and then the call was disconnected. Not by me. At this point I was feeling pretty angry but when I phoned back I did my best to be polite. On this second call I was told I would be phoned by someone TODAY to confirm the order they were supposed to actually be here to install TODAY. I do not have a cell phone so I have waited here all day now for NOTHING!!! Bell has not phoned me about anything, certainly not about confirming the order or apologizing for screwing up. Yes, the Bell reps speak well and are polite. But, I am so extremely tired of the screw ups and so really fed up with platitudes which mean nothing to me. Actions speak louder than words. Bell charges me $2.00 each month just to get a bill from them. This aggravates me, especially when there are ads included. So I am actually paying to get spam from Bell. I doubt an actual human being is reading this. Likely it is just a computer scanning words. Bell does not care about customers obviously. I don’t know why I’m giving Bell more of my time. I will be cancelling the TV order tomorrow when I am less upset and angry. I may cancel everything – it would save me a LOT of stress. No other company I deal with has been this difficult with misleading me, lying to me and all the rest. I like Bell’s actual service. But, having the service is far too much stress and has caused me to lose time at work which puts my job at risk each time Bell makes these non-existent appointments and then expects me to just take another day off for another appointment after they screw up. If an actual human being is reading this would you want to be a Bell customer if this was the day you had today? Not me.

Sorry for the block of text. I could have fixed it when I decided to post it. But, it kind of suits the block format. Like a blockhead in a trap.

It’s almost 4:30 now. Too late to expect a call from Bell. So, just more misinformation or can we just call it a lie because it feels that way to me.

She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were truly recycled.
But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags.

But too bad we didn’t do the green thing back then.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that young lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she’s right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart ass young person.

The real joke behind Red Green’s book about understanding women is that Steve Smith (the author) has been with his wife, Morag Smith, for over 45 years. Her 16th birthday was their first date. Now, over the age of retirement, they are still together.

During the TV show, “The Red Green Show” Red would mention his wife, naming her Bernice, but no wife ever appeared on the show. At the close of each show he would tell Bernice he was coming home after the meeting (with the Possum Lodge members). Usually something was added about what he wanted, or hoped for, once he would get home. It would always depend on the show that week. The routine of the show was to end showing a group of men, facing away from the camera and giving the “Man’s Prayer”.

This book is based on humour, not meant as completely serious advice, but everything written here comes from a man who will be celebrating 50 years with the same woman in the near future. Funny, but this comic relief is the voice of experience.

Steve Smith began the character of Red Green and later the Possum Lodge for a comedy troupe known as “Smith & Smith” based in Hamilton, Ontario. The troupe included his wife and a few other friends, both actors and comedians. “Smith & Smith” ended sometime in the 1980’s. “The Red Green Show” lasted 15 seasons, closing in 2006 so Steve Smith could ‘retire’. Not that he actually retired. Although the TV show ended the books, tours and TV appearances have continued.